Author: Janice Chan

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Are we there yet?

“How was the move?”

I keep getting this question, keep dreading it, and keep fumbling through an answer each time.

From behind a kitchen counter, we see a box of Kraft Mac and Cheese next a sink and a knife block. Beyond the counter are boxes and furniture and packing supplies strewn about the living room, and lit by sunlight coming in from the full length windows.

For those of you don’t know (or whom I missed in the chaos of relocating internationally with a toddler), I recently moved back to the United States after living in Japan for nearly four years.

Well. For one, my family and I are currently living in a temporary furnished place until we can move into our next place and until our sea shipment with 80% of our stuff (furniture, kitchenware, books, and apparently all my cozy sweaters) can arrive. Don’t get me wrong—it reduces so much stress not to have to sign a lease for something sight unseen or to have to scramble (while jetlagged) to apply for, get approved for, and sign a lease for housing as quickly as possible while living out of a hotel room with a small creature who enjoys climbing, but it also means that we will need to move again.

We moved countries but we’re not finished moving apartments. So the move is…ongoing?

As of this writing, it has been about two months since we arrived in the US.

If you have ever uprooted your life (to a new city, state, country), you know that even after the boxes are all unpacked (if you ever even unpack all of the boxes!) and you’ve updated your address on all of your accounts, it still takes a while to feel like you’re settled. Even if it’s a place where you’ve lived before. Things change. You change. Besides, what does settled even mean?

In change management, it’s helpful to have timeframes and milestones and indicators. That’s true in life and in work.

When we moved to Tokyo, I kept putting things off and would think that I would do them when we were more settled. When we moved into our new apartment (we spent the first couple months in a temporary place then as well). When our new apartment was fully set up. (I have lived without a bedframe before so perhaps this threshold required further refining.) When I had a regular daily routine. The goal posts either kept moving or were fuzzy at best.

One thing though, that I could articulate as an indicator (and did to someone who asked), was having a favorite local café or coffee shop. And we did indeed get to the point of having a favorite neighborhood coffee shop.

However, change is not linear. This, too, is true in life as much as it is when changing to a new database system at work.

The things I wanted to do after I felt more settled? Some I simply did, either by force of circumstance or because I just decided not to wait anymore. And some I never did get around to doing.

In Tokyo, I had friends, favorite neighborhood spots, routine things. Did I feel settled in Japan? Yes and no. (Ask anyone who has lived in another country and I imagine it is a complicated question for most if not all of us.)

The doing of things, reaching of milestones—they’re markers, but not necessarily permanent ones.

This is also true for things like changing to say, a new project management system. Maybe all the staff have completed the training and are using the new system (because you took away the old one). But chances are that people will still refer to the old processes for a while, may still jury-rigg things to make the new system act in the ways that they’re used to and that work well for them. And even if you are really thorough in your discovery, you get all the right stakeholders involved in designing processes and in planning the configuration—you’re still going to run into situations where real life and the system interact in ways you didn’t anticipate. And you’re going to need to adjust the process or reconfigure things—and then correspondingly update how-to guides and retrain people and manage the continued changes. (Change management: This is the actual song that never ends.)

While kilograms come easier to me now than pounds, I never did shift my brain over to Celsius so I was always looking up the weather and toggling back and forth between Celsius and Fahrenheit.

I had wanted to write a blog post about relocating before I left Japan. It seemed like the kind of thing one should do. It felt like something that a previous version of me would have made sure to do. Then we got on the plane and, well then I thought I should write one after I got settled. Or until I knew what I wanted to say. Or until I felt less…emotional and overwhelmed by it all. I kept waiting, waiting, waiting.

One could wait forever to be ready. (And there are many things for which I’m still not ready—ha!)

So here I am anyway, in an attempt to let go of being there yet. To let go of having some new next thing to share with you (I am still coaching and consulting), of feeling like my mind and my body are consistently in the same place, of having reached some mythical steady state where things won’t change for a while. (And yes, I can imagine everyone who has ever been a parent of a young child just going, “Ohhh, honey…”)

I’m still here. And also there. And also not there…yet. (Depending on your perspective and what we’re talking about.)

I’ll leave you with this excerpt from a podcast episode that really resonated with me recently and that I think may resonate with some of you, too.

Oliver Burkeman: One quick thing, that it was a big liberation for me, both in terms of writing techniques, but also in productivity, organizational, everything, to realize that there was nothing wrong with always experimenting and modifying, and that this wasn’t all supposed to be leading up to the perfect system.

And that actually, I’m one of those weird people who finds it quite enjoyable to tinker with what I’m doing there. And as long as that doesn’t become your entire life and take over from doing the writing, which it doesn’t when you accept it into your work like I do, increasingly. That’s great. And if you’re the kind of person who likes, overhauling your systems a bit and experimenting with new apps and things like that, fine. It’s just the problem is thinking that you’re going to find one eventually that’s going to be your salvation. That’s not going to happen. 

Parul Bavishi (London Writers Salon): I feel like if there’s one thing anyone takes away, I’ve certainly taken away from reading your book is that there’s no arrival. There’s just a continuous. 

(Here’s the full episode: London Writers Salon Episode #130: Oliver Burkeman – An Imperfectionist’s Guide to Overcoming Distraction and Finding Creative Flow, Writing Nonfiction)

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Trust your nose

If the building you were in was on fire, you would get out, right?

Picture of a white and green sign of a person running out an open door, labeled “emergency exit” in Japanese and English

Isn’t that what any reasonable person would do? Screw being rational—instinct should kick in, right?

Or, maybe another reasonable thing would be to see if you could put out the fire, if it were small. Or to call the fire department.

Sure, it depends on the size of the fire, and the risk to you or others, and the availability of a fire extinguisher, or whether or not there’s some sort of emergency sprinkler or fire suppression system.*

But first things first.

How do you know that there is a fire?

Once upon a time, I was in the office on a day where, for whatever reason, there were only 4 of us in the office (at full capacity there were maybe 25-30 people).

I smelled burning. Specifically, I smelled the chemical-y smell of plastic burning.

Now, I do not have the greatest sense of smell. (My husband often pokes fun at me for this.)

So I asked someone sitting hear me whether she smelled anything burning.

She said something like, “Oh. Yeah, it smells like something burned. But I don’t know what it is.”

I asked someone who sat further away from me, and he told me he couldn’t smell anything.

I went to the kitchen to check out the microwave (looking at you, Coworker-Who-Put-Foil-in-the-Microwave!): Nothing. I looked in the toaster oven: Not coming from there either.

I followed my nose.

I followed my nose to the on-site server room.

Did I see flames? No.

But it was DEFINITELY the origin of the burning plastic smell. And it was swelteringly hot in the room.

I went to go get the person who seemed most likely to know what to do in this situation—and who happened to not smell it because she had her office door closed, but noticed as soon as she came out into the hallway.

Turns out that the air conditioning broke down in the server room and that the server had overheated and was beginning to melt. So, it smelled like burning plastic because it was in fact plastic that 99.95% of the way to burning. But my hero was able to turn everything off before it actually caught on fire. Disaster averted!

In this not at all scientific but extremely real anecdote:

  • 25% of the people couldn’t smell anything
  • 25% of the people couldn’t smell anything because something was obstructing the odor
  • 25% of the people smelled something that indicated fire but did not think it was worth investigating
  • 25% of the people noticed the smell and did bother to investigate—that 25% was me!

What if I hadn’t thought it was worth investigating? Then, it would have meant:

  • 25% of the people couldn’t smell anything
  • 25% of the people couldn’t smell anything because something was obstructing the odor
  • 50% of the people smelled something that indicated fire but did not think it was worth investigating
  • The server would have caught on actual fire, which then would have triggered the sprinklers, and then would have damaged much more than the server

I realize this was an n of 4 situation, but I’m willing to bet you have been in similar situations where you’ve smelled what might be a fire (hopefully not the literal kind) and other people did too, but they didn’t think that they should do anything about it. Or even verify whether or not it was a fire or simply someone ruining their lunch. That difference can be one person. That difference can be you.

Trust your nose.

Don’t assume others have noticed the same things you have. Don’t assume that they are able to. Don’t assume that people will necessarily take action after having noticed the same things – or that anyone else recognizes this as a situation that requires action. Or at least an assessment of whether or not action is needed.

  • How do you know that there is a fire?
  • How do you know that there isn’t?

When’s a time you trusted your nose? I’d love to hear your stories. Of course, most situations do not have such a clear distinction between fire vs. not (a real) fire. If you’d like a thought partner for sorting through the smoke and haze, then let’s have a chat to assess if coaching could help you.

*Another true story: At another job, I once got a message from my manager not to come to the office because there had been an early morning fire in the on-site server room and the fire department had to be called to deal with the fire suppression chemicals and they weren’t sure when they could get into the building. I suppose there are multiple takeaways from this, but my main takeaway is that I do not want my organization’s servers to be on-site. That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.

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The Turmeric Clause

Earlier this week

Sigh. Well, it does not look like I am going to get to the gym today, but at least I’d finished a first draft of this proposal. Might as well tackle some other projects on my to-do list, but before that, I’m going to need a snack. Lunch was ages ago, so it would need to be a substantive snack. Hmmm…I know! Instant oatmeal! (Hey, it’s easy and creates minimal dishes.)

Pull out a bowl and set it on the kitchen counter. Pour in instant oatmeal and add some raisins. Now for a sprinkling of turmeric and cinnamon. (Very exciting, I know. Instant oatmeal in Japan does not come pre-flavored.)

Unscrew the cap with my right hand. Hold the glass bottle over the bowl and tap, tap with my fingers to sprinkle—

Left hand holding a glass jar of bright yellow turmeric powder in front of a wallpapered wall

All of a sudden, the bottle is on the floor, an earthy smell is tickling my nose, and there is turmeric all over the counter, floor, and wall.

(If you don’t know what turmeric is, it is a vivid yellow spice that seems really gorgeous until you’ve stained your clothing with it. Or your kitchen wallpaper. Hey, I did not choose to put wallpaper in the kitchen. We are renting. But seriously. Who puts wallpaper in a kitchen?!)

This was not a cleanup that could wait. (Not if we have any hope of getting our deposit back.)

This was also not a thing that was one of my timeboxes nor on my to-do list.

Today

You know what else is never on our to-do list or our neatly timeboxed schedule? Sick days (for you, your kid, or anyone else you’re a caregiver for) or internet outages or sleepless nights or that seemingly minor life administrative task that took about 12x longer than you originally thought it would because every time you completed one step, you discovered three more prerequisites. Or those emails that you get when you’re your own IT administrator notifying you that tool you use all the time just decided they were going to sunset some function you (and perhaps only you?) use all the time.

Such is life.

So while we can allow margins for circumstances we know about—like, that we’ll be jetlagged after coming back from vacation, or that we need to finish work early to go to a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, or that our partner has a business trip and we’ll be solo parenting next week—how often do we even do that for ourselves?

And if we’re not doing that, we are DEFINITELY NOT allowing margins for things like exploding turmeric all over your kitchen. (Exploding may be hyperbole, but I really don’t know how my finger taps turned what was supposed to be a dusting of turmeric into a party-of-one Holi celebration.) Which, to be fair, is not an emergency by any means. Nor is it all that important. But it is one of those things that will become a bigger and more ongoing mess if you don’t deal with it immediately.

So, I hereby introduce to you The Turmeric Clause:

I shall not hold myself responsible for failure or delay in performing any obligation or duty when such failure or delay is caused by or results from causes beyond my reasonable control, including but not limited to being a human with a body, being actually responsible for taking care of humans or other living beings, having emotions, vastly underestimating a task’s level of effort because I’ve never done it before, vastly overestimating my capacity because I am a people pleaser or a novice or just because I am still working on that whole asking for help thing, being in relationship with people who have bodies and emotions, failures of systems not designed for actual humans, successes of systems that actually were designed to oppress people, or, you know, things like exploding turmeric all over my kitchen.

However, I shall hold myself accountable for building in some amount of margin into my life because even if the exact circumstances or timing cannot be predicted, where there be turmeric (or humans), there will be sh*t hitting the something I wasn’t planning on that I will need to deal with. This margin may consist of time, budget, brain capacity, energy reserves, friends, chocolate, or other resources and lifelines. I owe it to myself to acknowledge the circumstances beyond my reasonable control, to release any guilt or misplaced responsibility I’ve been taking on, and to adjust my margins as I learn—so that I can do the things I need and want to do.

What does this look like in practice? Right now, I’m starting with scaling back the amount of work I plan for in a given week. If I have time and space to do more, great! (There is always more.) For me, certain things help give me the brain capacity and energy, so prioritizing the consistency of those practices more than I have been will also give me more margin to tackle the unexpected.

What does building in a margin for yourself look like in practice? I’d love to hear about your version of The Turmeric Clause! And if that feels challenging but like something that would be useful for you, we can talk about that.

Many thanks to my coach, Pam Daghlian, for coining the phrase “The Turmeric Clause” after I told her the story of spilling turmeric all over my kitchen.

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Change and impact: Not just for other people

Side view of me speaking at a lectern, with a laptop open to slides and speaking notes in an open binder. I am an Asian woman, and I’m wearing a blue blouse and a yellow skirt.
Here I am speaking at a conference for the first time, at the 2017 Nonprofit Technology Conference. Photo credit: Marci Soifer

The first time I spoke at a conference, it was not because I thought I had something useful to contribute. In fact, my first thought was: “Me? I’m not an expert. I’m not a speaker.* I can’t possibly be the right person to do this.”

Someone requested help (the conference had a two-speaker per session requirement). Someone else believed I could do it. And because I often doubt myself, I also doubted whether I was correct about not being the right person to join this conference talk. (Turns out self-doubt can occasionally be useful. Also, thank you Ash Shepherd for letting me borrow your confidence in me!) 

So I talked to the person leading the session. And then my excitement in coming up with ideas and delving into the topic overrode my fear of public speaking and doubts about my ability to do a good job (until like, the day before the conference, of course). I was nervous during the presentation. But I did it. And people got useful things from it. (Thank you, Marci Soifer, for being a great co-presenter/session leader!)

More importantly, I got something extremely useful out of it: Speaking at my first conference changed how I saw myself, and the experience challenged the things I thought myself capable of doing. 

“So today, you’re writing 1000 words. And you will write many more words after that. Those words will matter. They may not change the world, but they will change you.” — Roxane Gay

It can be transformative to do things we’re not sure we can do–or we’re not sure we can do them well (calling all perfectionists). Not everything is going to be a hit out of the park, but we carry forth what we learn from the experience and what we learn about ourselves. 

Why does that matter?

Not everything we do needs to change the world. Most of the things we do won’t. But in the aggregate, they add up. There are enough people in the world who are confident without basis. We don’t need more confident people. In the face of complex challenges, what the world needs is more people who can handle doing things while being uncertain, who have an accurate understanding of what they’re capable of and can contribute, and who are willing to share those. 

It’s not about public speaking or raising your hand for that role or publishing that story publicly so much as it is about what gets unlocked within you once you do it. Because without shifting things inside of ourselves, we won’t be able to do the things that shift things outside of ourselves.

Do I love public speaking? No. I still get nervous and self-conscious. I just don’t let it stop me any more when I have something valuable to share. Because now, mixed in with that nervousness, is hope for what sharing that might unlock for someone.

If I hadn’t said yes (or really, “Um, okay, sure I guess?”) eight years ago, I likely would not have ended up giving a talk last year in which I referenced my upbringing and then had an audience member come up to me afterwards to say that she’d felt seen in a way that she hadn’t in a professional space before. Was that world changing? No. But it mattered to her. And that matters to me.

So that thing that you’ve been nervous about doing, about putting out into the world?

Maybe it won’t get any responses or it gets rejected or it never leads to anything external. But doing it will make you a person who didn’t let fear get in the way of doing that thing. Isn’t that worth it?

I would love to cheer you on, if you’d like to share. Or, if you are interested in having a thinking partner as you work on these things, let’s find a time to talk.

*Yes, even though I had taught courses and my job at the time involved leading classroom-based staff training, those were still new things for me AND it’s different to facilitate an interactive training than to present to people for 30-60 minutes. Or at least it is in my head.

P.S. I’m still a scaredy cat and lots of things still scare me or make me nervous! But there are people who benefit from us playing smaller than we are, and there are people who would benefit if we were to live at our actual size. Think about who those two groups of people are. 

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Feeding myself from an empty bowl

A couple weeks ago, I pulled out a bowl, set it on the table, and then walked away to go do something that I just remembered I had forgotten to do. Half an hour later, I sat down at the table and looked at the empty bowl. In my quest to do the one more thing before I forgot about it again, I had forgotten to actually make lunch or put anything into the bowl.

empty white ceramic bowl with blue and brown lines around the edge, on a brown fabric placemat

I laughed and thought to myself that it was funny that I literally tried to feed myself from an empty bowl.

Last week, I had some type of respiratory thing that evolved into a sinus infection/ear infection. And then on top of that, I got pink eye. (I imagine those of you with small humans in your life can relate to what happens when someone is always sneezing or coughing in your face after spending lots of time with other small humans who also put everything in their mouths.) 

It has been a very long time since I have felt so physically walloped, as if I’d been drenched in a solution of germs and then wrung out to dry.

The thing is that I’ve been operating in some varying state of sleep deprivation for the past 7 months. Sometimes I am not great about eating balanced meals during the daytime, being a bit of a lifelong grazer. (Elevensies, anyone?) And sometimes, you know, our bodies decide that we need to be sat down and given a stern warning because we have not been listening to them. And also that most things are not actually as important or as urgent as they seem when are brains (and society?) are yelling, “Go, go, go!”

It was a humbling reminder that most of us probably need to ask for help more often than we do. And even if we could do it on our own, there are times when maybe we should ask for help in the name of doing things in a sustainable manner. (Thank you, David, for not once saying you told me so.) There are times when asking for help is a way of letting people in, as well. And while that vulnerability can be scary (and while some people certainly have not earned the trust for that), I’ve found that people’s responses more often than not show me how limited my imagination can be sometimes for someone’s capacity to show up in a way I didn’t know I needed.

Anyhow, the question I have for you right now is:

What’s in that bowl you’re feeding yourself from?

If you’re open to sharing what’s in your bowl, I’m curious to hear about it and how that’s been working out for fueling you. Or if you’d like to make a change and don’t know where to start, then let’s have a chat and find out if I can help with that.

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Saying what we mean

Several years ago, I was in a volunteer meeting, and we were going around making introductions. The volunteer manager asked us to introduce ourselves and share our pronouns. And one of my peer volunteers, when they introduced themselves, asked if they could make another request to the group about language.

They asked that we not use the word “crazy.” In American English, this is commonly used as an adverb (as a synonym for “very”) and as an adjective (sometimes as a synonym for “hectic” and sometimes as a synonym for “absurd”).

They asked that we not use a word that is commonly used to stigmatize mental illness and to write off the people who had it—because societally, we joke about mental illness in the way we never do with things we consider to be “real” medical conditions. And this is hurtful.

The volunteer offered alternatives such as “wild” or “ridiculous” or “outrageous” for when actually we meant that something was nonsensical or unpredictable. “Very” also has many synonyms. Something can be supremely good. And if we’re busy or work is hectic—we should simply say so.

Individual bananas scattered across a coral pink background
Another alternative is “bananas,” but I find this more confusing to explain because it is highly contextual as to whether it refers to an absurd situation or something really cool. | Photo by matthew Feeney on Unsplash

It was my first introduction to ableist language as a concept. Ableist as in it reinforces ableism. If you’re unfamiliar with ableism, think of it like racism or ageism, but instead of being based on race or on one’s age, it’s based on “valuing certain bodies and minds over others,” as summed up by the Berkeley Disability Lab. (Of note, there is a lot of overlap between ageism and ableism, and intersectionality of all the -ism’s since we all have multiple aspects of our identities.)

Now, there are others who have explained ableist language, and I’m not here to attempt to poorly copy their explanations. This is not about being politically correct. As Lydia X.Z. Brown points out in “Ableist Words and Terms to Avoid,” we can also adjust our language out of respect for other humans and general common decency.

I’d like to argue that furthermore, we ought to say what we mean.

If we think someone made a bad decision, then let’s say that we think they made a poor decision or that we disagree with them. If we mean that a situation was emotionally intense, then let’s say that. Better yet, let’s share the fear we felt, how our heart was pounding so loud we thought the other person might hear it, too. If that dish was extremely delicious, let’s tell the chef that we wanted to lick the plate! (Okay, maybe I’ve been known to literally lick a plate or several…)

This is not a call to be more restrictive, but to be more creative.

Listen, I’m a poet – I love a good metaphor. But in poetry, an effective metaphor is one that brings us closer to the truth, not further from it.

Saying that “work is crazy” or “the world is crazy” doesn’t really help me understand what you mean. There are so many assumptions piled into a single word that we’re trying to force to carry an awful lot of weight. Tell me more. Is work so busy that you haven’t been home for dinner in two weeks? Or is it that your boss changes his mind multiple times a day and then blames you for not listening to his instructions? Is it that the world is being run by people who say one thing while doing the opposite at the same time right in front of us? Or is that the world is full of things you could never have imagined, in ways both good and bad? Or none of those?

I won’t know if you won’t tell me what you truly mean.

July is Disability Pride Month! July 1990 is when the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law in the US, although Disability Pride Month is celebrated worldwide. If you’d like to learn more about how the ADA came to be and the disability rights movement in the US, I recommend watching the documentary Crip Camp. If you are worried about offending people, Emily Landau wrote a great book titled Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to be an Ally. And if you’re interested in disability culture and how disabled people tell their own narratives, check out the Disability Visibility Project.

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The spoons we carry

Stainless steel teaspoon with a slightly bent handle on a brown fabric placemat

“Who doesn’t bring a spoonful of fear to the first day of a new job?” – Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry

Years ago, I participated in a teambuilding event where one of the things we had to do was to fill a cup with water from a bucket—which was about 10 feet away—using a teaspoon.

I recall that there was no explanation for why we did this activity exactly (to infuriate us?!?) and that it was a competition to see which team finished filling their cup first. Trying to carry a teaspoon of water anywhere without spilling it is an exercise in frustration unto itself. I’m not sure how turning it into an internal competition was supposed to help our team cohesion either. It felt a bit counterproductive. (Unless the point was to unite everyone by our extreme irritation with all of the activity facilitators by the end of the day? I also recall some shaming by the facilitators about how we were supposed to collaborate and be creative.)

However, the quote above from The Light We Carry reminds me of this activity. Of how difficult it was to get from point A to point B while carrying this spoon of water and desperately trying—and failing—not to spill it. Don’t let them see you sweat! That’s advice I remember hearing, particularly as a woman and nearly always from other women. Even if you’re scared, you’re not supposed to let anyone see that. This is a message I’m sure many of us have heard (or at least it’s a common one in the US).

But we are sweating! And we’re carrying around it in a damn teaspoon, trying not to spill it while moving towards a destination. And we’re supposed to look good while doing it, too?

There are many metaphors for fear, and there is much advice about it. (Some advice seems much healthier than holding it all in. For example, using fear as a form of fuel, as the former First Lady suggests, or recognizing that fear can be an indicator that something or someone is important to us.)

Why not spill it?

The first time I went to a networking event in Tokyo, in 2022, I was super nervous. I hadn’t really gone to any such events since 2019, I’m always nervous around new people, and here I was trying to do it in a new country and in a place where I didn’t know anyone. After the host asked me a fairly innocuous question (probably what I do) and giving a rambling, probably nonsensical answer, I was sweating through my shirt.

Then I heard the person in front of me wonder out loud about what we were supposed to do, whether to get in line for the drinks, or how does one even introduce themselves to strangers anymore. It was as if I just heard all the thoughts in my head spoken out loud! Because I had. She turned to me and introduced herself, and that’s how I made my first friend (who wasn’t introduced to me by someone I already knew) in Tokyo.

Instead of trying to figure out ways to transfer the water if you can’t move the bucket or the cup, we ought to be questioning whose cup we are filling by carrying this water across this distance in these tiny spoons.

Are there still spaces in which letting them see you sweat is going to be something that others will use to undermine you? Unfortunately, yes. It’s their form of sweating in public – undermining others based on something that’s irrelevant because of how insecure those people are. But admittedly, it doesn’t change the fact that sometimes those people still have more power within certain spaces.

Still, I’m finding that there are more and more places where it’s better (and more rewarding) to spill it. Rather than trying to fill the cup that society tells us to fill, it’s better to water the ground around us. The point is not to carry the spoons, to carry the water, or to fill some arbitrary container. To continue to carry our true feelings and our humanness and our uniqueness in a tiny little spoon across the playing field is to continue to play by rules that were never meant for us, because the people who set the rules always intended for us to remain on the sidelines. And that’s the point of carrying the spoonful of water (or fear, or whatever) and trying not to spill it.

When we focus on not letting them see us sweat, we collude in their false narrative that vulnerability is weakness.

Screw the game. We’re each of us more powerful than we realize, sometimes even in those spaces that run on insecurity. When we focus on not letting them see us sweat, we collude in their false narrative that vulnerability is weakness. But if you think about the strongest people you know in life, I’m willing to bet that they’re actually the people who are secure enough to admit when they made a mistake, to choose courage in spite of how scared they are, and to be a whole human in a world that would find it easier if we could be tiny little machines that just stayed in our lanes.

But it’s not about what I think either. What do you think? What do you know to be true?

  • Are you here to play a game? Or to grow and create something?
  • What spoons are you carrying? What’s in them? Whose cup are you filling with them? And who benefits from that?

If you’re interested in a thought partner to help you unpack these questions, please reach out and we can find a time to talk.

Note: While I did not directly reference Spoon Theory in this post, it’s worth noting that, while the metaphor may also work for people without disabilities, that the concept of spoons and how many spoons you have available to get through your day comes from and is primarily used by the disability community. If you’re unfamiliar with Spoon Theory, I encourage you to give the linked article a read!

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Letting go to move forward

Okay, I know it’s almost summer in the northern hemisphere, but bear with me as I try to recall the chill of an ice rink as the weather in Tokyo gets warm and humid. | Photo by Kelli McClintock on Unsplash

Have you ever watched someone try to ice skate for the first time?

Often when people are ice skating for the first time, they want to hold on to something, like to the wall around the ice rink, or to someone’s hand. This makes sense. They don’t want to fall! 

But here’s the thing: When you hold onto something that’s not in the direction you’re trying to go in, you will keep veering towards whatever (or whomever) you’re holding onto. Even if it’s a person who is skating alongside you.

In order to skate forward (fully forward), you have to let go.

Holding on doesn’t mean you won’t fall. (I say as someone who has gone down multiple times when the person holding onto me has fallen.)

It’s not actually necessarily safer. (You can definitely tweak a muscle during your attempts to hold on while falling!)

Of course, it’s instinctual to want to hold onto something or someone that represents safety when we feel insecure, when we’re worried about falling. Just think of a new manager who is still stuck in execution mode, the bilingual partner who is the constant interpreter without even being asked, or that friend or family member who remains in a place (or a social circle) they’ve long outgrown.

But as anyone who knows how to ice skate will tell you: Falling down is part of the process.

Lately I’ve been thinking about what I’ve been holding onto that seems safer, but isn’t necessarily, or that perhaps was safer once upon a time but that I now need to let go of in order to move fully forward.

This feels especially salient as a new parent and as one who is coming back to work. I feel like I’ve been slow to relaunch as I’ve been trying to figure out how to integrate things in this new configuration–and as someone who is not entirely the same person I once was.

In past transitions, I’ve had to let go of things like being the expert, of how I needed to act in certain ways while in certain jobs, of needing to fully understand things in order to make a decision (definitely can’t hold onto that and do anything in a foreign country!), and many more things. Some of these (okay, many), I am still working on letting go of.

I don’t have an answer yet this time (my kid is not even 6 months old yet at the time of this writing and I only took off my out-of-office on my work email a few weeks ago) but here’s the question I’ll be pondering:

What is it I need to let go of in order to move fully forward?

If you’re open to sharing, I’d love to hear what you’ve previously let go of in order to get to where you are now. If you’re also in a transitional space at the moment and curious about partnering with a coach to think through this question, please reach out and we can find a time to talk.


Author’s Note

I’ve been struggling to write my first blog post after quietly coming back from parental leave. (Although perhaps coming back is not quite the right phrase either as I get ready to take some time off again for family time?)

There it is again. That belief that there is a right phrase. That there’s a perfect sequence. That there’s a right order of doing this–integrating life and work and reintroducing myself and communicating that externally. As if I should process map my whole life.

But life isn’t linear. Most things are not dichotomies, not A vs. B but points on a continuum that has more than two dimensions.

Sure, there are things that can be sequenced for a smoother process. But even if you’re designing a service that is largely automated, and you have created a workflow that works for most people most of the time, you’ll still need to consider various conditions. There will likely be branch off points. What about the person using assistive technology? What about the person who has to pause and restart later because it is during the 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. window and the washing machine repair person has finally come? What about the person who is trying to pay the bills for their parent who has dementia?

I digress. Few things have been as loud reminders that there is no one right way of doing things as much as having a baby. There’s what works for this kid, for our family. There’s what’s works best for right now. There’s lots of discovering that what worked last week or worked in before times no longer works. And there’s a lot of…well, that’s really not all that important in the grand scheme of things. 

Is it still a struggle to keep that in perspective? Daily. Sometimes hourly. Is working to let go of things a lifelong practice? Yes. But it helps to know what is important to me, what it is I’m moving towards, and it helps to have a good team. (I am so grateful to be navigating this together with my amazing partner!) 

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Name the unknowns

Wide eyed gray kitten attempts to climb up the side of a sleep pod but is sliding down and appears to be licking her way down
One of countless situations I’m sure this kitten has wondered how they got themselves into…

When you feel lost and overwhelmed, name the unknowns. Don’t leave them to be shapeless creatures lurking in the dark. Describe them. State what exactly you do not know about them, and they will slowly begin to take shape.

Will that give you certainty?

No. (Alas. I, too, am a creature who craves certainty and knowing.)

But naming the unknowns will help illuminate which specific things are actually unknown, and of these, which are actionable or answerable, vs. which things are beyond your control (so you can stop worrying about them).

I’ve been reminded recently of how useful it can be to name the unknowns. Of how useful it can be to inventory what you know (e.g., I know I like writing) and what you don’t (e.g., I don’t know whether I would like writing if it was my job). While I often like to use the Known-Unknowns exercise, it can be as simple as writing a list of the things—and then moving things from one column to the other.

  1. For example, when you think about this thing that feels unknown and uncertain, what are the things you wish you knew?
  2. Okay, now that you know what questions you have or what information you like, which of these can be addressed with some research, by talking to people, by looking at the data, or by making a decision?
  3. Next to each of those, list how you’ll work towards an answer.
  4. Of the items that are left on your list, which of these are simply unknowable or cannot be answered with any useful degree of certainty (or cannot be answered now)? Cross those out. (Or move them into some bucket for when you’re feeling philosophical.)
  5. If there are any unknowns still left on your list, which of these are outside of your control? Cross those out. (Or, if helpful, you can keep them as a reminder of things not worth worrying about.)
  6. If there are items that are partly within your control, then separate them out by creating a question you can answer and noting how you’ll answer it, and leaving behind the question that is unknowable or beyond your control (and do what you did for the rest of those).

When something feels too big, too much, or too overwhelming, it’s easy to lose sight of the things we do know already, and of what we can do. Naming your unknowns won’t tell you what to do next or give you certainty, but it will help you sort out which things are actually unknown, which things to let go of, and help you see what’s actionable enough to figure out where to start.

What do you find helpful when you feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start? Or, did you try out the process above? Let me know how it went!

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The opposite of stress isn’t rest — it’s play

A playful bakery in Tokyo makes little dough people for decorations.

While listening to an On Being episode where Krista Tippett interviewed Jacqueline Novogratz (founder and CEO of Acumen), I heard Novogratz say that the opposite of poverty is not wealth but dignity. 

And I love that. Working towards dignity is much more constructive and outcomes-oriented than simply working towards wealth. (Because what is that wealth about? What it affords us. But what it affords us given the current systems we live within is the real goal, not the money in and of itself.) 

Beyond the immediate example in that statement though, is the concept that sometimes the literal opposite is not the actual opposite. It’s easy enough to find statements of what people are against, and so much rarer for people to state what they are for.

In a broader context, sometimes we try to solve a problem by doing its literal opposite. And often, that’s not a particularly useful strategy.

Have you ever tried to tell a stressed-out person to relax?

Have you ever been the extremely stressed person who snaps back at the person who told you to relax because when has relaxing ever solved ANYTHING?!?!?!

*Raises hand for both*

While relaxation is the goal, we don’t get there by relaxing—by resting or lounging around doing nothing. At least, not if we’re already stressed. Because let me tell you from personal experience: you can absolutely lounge around in pajamas doing nothing all day and be highly stressed the whole time. (Or basically, this is relaxing as the verb without the outcome of feeling relaxed.)

I once worked with someone (thanks, Joe!) who told me that the key to getting someone to stop doing something is not telling them to stop, but to get them to replace it with another behavior. Ideally, the replacement behavior is such that you cannot do the behavior you’re trying to stop at the same time (think chewing gum and smoking).

So think about the last time you played. If that feels hard because you can’t remember the last time you had fun (or trying to figure out what constitutes play is stressing you out), think about the last time you had a good laugh. The kind of laugh where you’re holding your belly, gasping for air, and maybe even tearing up a little.

Could you be stressed at the same time? Did your body feel looser afterwards?

That’s what fun feels like.

Play forces us to be present. If we’re not present, we’re not having fun, and it stops being play. Meanwhile, stress is usually about something upcoming—not the present moment.

If you can’t remember how to play, then start small. Take a play break with your pet (or a friend’s). Have a 5-minute dance party. Draw some terrible art. Play with your food and make a scene on the plate. Make silly faces at a baby. Skip down the street because you can. Use a picture of your dream house as a background for your next video call. Get creative with your outfit for no reason besides feeling like it. Step outside and blow some bubbles. If there are ways you like to play, go for it!

But all work and no play makes us all very stressed out and no fun to be around.

During 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, when lots of people were doing daily walks around the neighborhood, some of neighborhood kids (in Baltimore, Maryland, USA) created this hopscotch course to make the walks a little more fun. Because, why not?